Multi-classing in level-based games

[Username17]

So making open multiclassing/feat grab bag work... knowing the failure points is key so how to avoid them?

Broadly, yes. Although there are a lot of failure points.

Let's consider two abilities: the treadmill ability and the static ability. This could be anything from attack versus armor class to sense motive versus bluff for the treadmill abilities and anything from levitation to speaking Portuguese for the static ability. But for ease of conceptualization, let's make them directly opposed: Firebolts versus Fire Immunity.

So you can get an unlimited number of progressively larger firebolts to throw at higher level opposition, but to a first approximation fire immunity doesn't actually change or improve, nor does it need to. Both Fire Immunity and some example of a Fire Bolt would be appropriate to give to a 'first level' character, and the character with the Fire Bolt attack could receive a bonus to that attack at 2nd level and every other level forever. But of course, the Fire Immune character has the advantage over the Firebolt character at 1st level and they have the advantage at 6th level and the have the advantage at 31st level. All without ever getting a single bonus to their fire immunity.

Now if you want to, you can incrementalize anything at all. That fire immunity could be put on a treadmill of fire resistance where sufficiently higher level fire would blast through it. But of course that's stupid, and also 'You're still fire immune, but that immunity now extends to the monsters you would be fighting now but wouldn't have been fighting before' sure doesn't feel like a real ability.

What you want in character advancement is for everyone to get a mixture of abilities that progress as they go up in level and abilities that don't need to. And once you've wrapped your mind around that, and the fact that a treadmill ability that stops keeping up with the treadmill is effectively an ability you lose, you have a handle on what leeway you actually have with regards to your level advancement and 'multiclassing' options.

-Username17

[Orion]

What you want in character advancement is for everyone to get a mixture of abilities that progress as they go up in level and abilities that don't need to.

I accept your premise that it is bad to let players choose a la carte from a mixed bag of treadmill and static abilities. Making two separate bags is a solution that would work, but I don't think you've exhausted the solution space. Why not try eliminating ether static or treadmill abilities entirely?

No-Treadmill Elevator Pitch: Level-based Point Buy.

In the level-based point buy game, you get a Power Level and a pile of Character Points. Lookup your Power Level on the big table and it spits out all your numbers: you attack at +X accuracy with trained weapons and +X defense with known defenses, you deal Yd6 damage with evocation spells, you get +Z to trained skill checks. There will be a couple of types of ability that are basically mandatory, depending on the system. Maybe you need to buy at least one spammable attack, and at least one personal defense. Once those core purchases are done, all your luxury buys effectively function like static abilities providing situational advantages. Let's say that you've already bought Fire Bolts and Dodge. You have enough points left to buy one more ability, and 5 options to consider: Fire Touch, which is the same as Fire Bolts except melee, Lightning Bolts, which are the same as Fire Bolts except they attack a different resistance, Chain Mail, which doesn't stack with Dodge and gives the same bonus as Dodge but doesn't turn-off when you're entangled, Fire Immunity, Favored Enemy: Orcs, or Low-Light Vision. None of these abilities will add vertical power to your Dodge/Fire Bolts build, but they each grant situational attack or defense benefits against certain types of enemies (fast-moving melee attackers, fire-resistant creatures, enemies that entangle, enemies with fire attacks, orcs, and enemies that live in caves, respectively)

[Orion]

No-Statics Elevator Pitch: Tightly Curated Challenge Spaces:

You're writing a fantasy RPG. You say that because of your setting's magic physics, conjuring fire is one of the easiest types of magic to learn. Conjuring electricity is more difficult, and conjuring cold even more difficult. You make your low-level adventure setting an Arabian Nights desert. Mid-level adventurers climb up to cloud castles or delve into the underdark. High-level adventures teleport to far-off frozen wastelands or plane shift into Hell. Hell looks like it's on fire, but the fire is green, and it deals Hellfire damage which is a different damage type that doesn't interact with Fire Resistance. Result?

Level 1 enemies can only do Fire damage.
Level 4 enemies can do Fire or Lightning.
Level 7 enemies can do Fire, Lightning, or Cold.
Level 11 enemies can do Lightning, Cold, or Hellfire.

We have now put energy immunity on a treadmill. If you buy Fire Immunity at level 1, it protects you from 100% of all incoming energy damage. As you level up, it smoothly scales down to 50%, 33%, and eventually 0% protection. In the same way that a ranged attacker needs to keep pumping points into Fire Bolt upgrades to keep dealing level-appropriate damage, a tank need to keep throwing points into Lightning, Cold, and Hellfire immunity to be protected against level-appropriate attacks.

Now let's do Lockpicking. We are not going to have level 10 locks, because that would be dumb. If we make Lockpicking a one-time purchase that auto-succeeds on any lock, how much is that ability worth? That depends on how many locked doors you find and on what other options you have to get around them. Let's say that at level 1, the bad guys have a lot of locked doors, and your only options are to pick the lock or smash it down, which is loud and slow. By level 7, the bad guys have replaced about half their locked doors with warded archways that zap intruders, and by level 10 they've phased out locked doors entirely. Higher-level characters are also more likely to have other ways to get through doors. Level 4 characters can blast doors open, or just Hulk Smash them, and can cast Silence first if necessary. Level 10 characters can just Teleport to the other side. Result: As you go from level 1 to level 10, Lockpicking smoothly scales down from solving 100% of your door problems, to 0% of your door problems.

[hyzmarca]

Now if you want to, you can incrementalize anything at all. That fire immunity could be put on a treadmill of fire resistance where sufficiently higher level fire would blast through it. But of course that's stupid, and also 'You're still fire immune, but that immunity now extends to the monsters you would be fighting now but wouldn't have been fighting before' sure doesn't feel like a real ability.

If you want to do it that way, you don't give Fire Immunity at all. You give percentile Fire Resistance, with 100% Fire Resistance being defacto immunity. But can be blasted though by enemies who can bestow percentile Weakness to Fire.

Lets say that you have 100% Fire Resistance, your friend has no fire resistance, and you're fighting a monster with a 20% Fire weakness aura and a 10 damage fire attack.

Now, instead of taking no damage from the monster's attack, you're taking 2 damage because you're only 80% resistant right now. But your friend is taking 12 damage because he's 20% extra vulnerable. So you're fire resistance isn't suddenly useless against stronger monsters, it's still extremely potent, just not a complete win button.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I'd rather shoot myself in the dick than deal with more fucking percentages in tabletop games.

[Iduno]

No-Treadmill Elevator Pitch: Level-based Point Buy.

Just to be clear, the goal here is to combine the more complicated system of character creation with the less-reasonable (mathematically) way to advance characters in-game?

Tone doesn't always translate to text, so I can't tell if you're making some elaborate joke or not.

[Foxwarrior]

No-Statics Elevator Pitch: Tightly Curated Challenge Spaces

I like this one, I feel like it does a pretty good job of resolving the conflict between wanting leveling up to feel like your character is getting stronger and encountering new challenges that aren't just reskins, while also not wanting to drop the heroic adventuring party thing in favor of restaurant chain management or whatever.

I'm not sure you should be able to put points into fire bolt to make it level appropriate though; a more interesting meta development is if, say, you were using Fire Bolts at level 1, Fireball at level 5, and Hellfire Slap (melee touch) at level 11. With attacks that fall off the treadmill, you can sometimes make higher-level attacks take a step backwards in terms of range or area, to change up the meta in more ways than a gradual, smooth, progression from melee to ultra long range AoEs.

[Foxwarrior]

No-Treadmill Elevator Pitch: Level-based Point Buy.

Just to be clear, the goal here is to combine the more complicated system of character creation with the less-reasonable (mathematically) way to advance characters in-game?

Tone doesn't always translate to text, so I can't tell if you're making some elaborate joke or not.

His example was of a character who had to spend 3 points total.

[Orion]

Bonus Round: Porque No Los Dos

I actually think that if we put everything on a frequency-of-use-case treadmill, we can eliminate both numerical scaling treadmills and "evergreen" static abilities. As you level up, all your old abilities should become more effective when relevant but also relevant less frequently.

Suppose that level 1 monsters (like wolves) have 9 HP, level 4 monsters (like bugbear assassins) have 28 HP, and level 7 monsters (like manticores) have 40 HP. If you buy Longbow Proficiency at level 1, you can shoot arrows that deal Xd6 damage where X = your level. Right away, we see that a Level 1 Ranger will shave off less than half a Wolf's HP with one shot, a level 4 Ranger takes exactly half the Bugbear's HP, and the level 7 Ranger takes more than half the manticore's HP. The more experienced your archer gets, the faster they can kill the kinds of targets you want to kill with arrows. Difficulty is preserved because the higher level enemies have different tactical profiles. The wolf takes longer to kill, but you can shoot at it while it runs toward you. The Bugbear can sneak up close to you before you see it, so you kill it faster but have less time to do so. The Manticore opens fire on you as soon as you're in range, so you need to kill it as quickly as possible. However, not all level 7 monsters can be killed with normal arrows. Some of them are immune to Projectile damage because they are ghosts or iron golems or werewolves. If you are a dedicated archer, you will use your high-level ability slots to pick up ability like Blessed Arrows, Explosive Arrows, and so on. Explosive Arrows don't deal more damage to manticores than regular arrows do, but they do deal damage to iron golems. If you're not a dedicated archer character, you could turn into a Jedi and buy Force Lightning instead. If you are actually a hulk-like barbarian who happened to pick up longbow training at level 1, your bow will always be useful when you pull it out, but you'll pull it out less and less often.

Defense and "Skills" work similarly. At Level 1, "Alertness" gives you a 50% chance to spot hidden ambushers. At Level 7, it gives you a 100% chance to spot ambushers who aren't invisible, but half the ambushers are invisible. A level 1 Monk get a Deflect Arrows skill that works 50% of the time. Level 7 Monks can Deflect Arrows 100% of the time, but they only fight half as many archers.

[Foxwarrior]

Porque No Los Dos requires much more content design vigilance than the other ones. You may think a player will find fewer rounds of shooting the enemies from relative safety at higher levels, but your archer player noticed uses for a six inch portal spell that you missed.